1. There is no direct statement in the Bible defining the tithes as money. Tithe opponents take implied meaning by cherry picking the scriptures and derive their own conclusions that tithing is not money to fit their anti-tithing agenda. Without an explicit statement, we cannot come to a conclusion that tithing was only from food.

Well, there is no direct statement in the Bible about the following either:

Nowhere in the Bible, it is explicitly stated that the Canon has been closed

Nowhere in the Bible, it is stated that the Divine inspiration of the written scriptures have stopped after the book of Revelation

Nowhere in the Bible it is stated that Old Testament should consist of 39 books and the New Testament should consist of 27 books and the Protestant Canon is the only acceptable scripture.

Nowhere in the Bible, it is directly stated that slavery is wrong, Christians should not own slaves.

Nowhere in the Bible it is directly stated that God is a Triune God!

There is no mention about pre-trib rapture in the Bible directly or the rapture will happen in 2 phases.

There is no explicit statement in the Scriptures about “assurance of salvation”

There is no explicit statement in the Bible which says “Masturbation is a sin”

So what? Without an explicit teaching from the Bible, most of the tithe teachers believe all of the above or most of the above.

Example of Jesus giving implied meaning:

In Matthew 22:31-32 -Even Jesus told the Sadducees that Exodus 3:6 mentions about the resurrection of the dead. Exodus 3:6 does not explicitly state that dead would be resurrected but mentions about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the present tense, therefore it implies about future resurrection. That is Jesus’ point.

Therefore there is nothing wrong in concluding that tithes were only from food.

Bible were only from food and livestock and that is the empirical definition based upon the prescriptions given in the Law of Moses.